He then notices the students have their backpacks in their laps or already looped around their shoulders. The wall clock reads five to two. “Sorry to keep you. I was just so caught up in the lesson that I lost track of . . . you know what? Let me just give you the homework real quick.” He uncaps a marker but before he can write more than a few letters on the whiteboard, the students pop out of their seats and shuffle from the room. “Or how about I e-mail you the homework!” he calls after them. “Be sure to check your e-mail!”

The Tapir caps his pen, stands up nimbly, and joins the exiting current of students. He glances Jack’s way, giving him that familiar smile. An executioner’s smile. Then he reaches out a hand. And shuts off the lights.

When the room is empty and the door clicks shut, Jack stands dumbly in the gray light of the afternoon. Then he shoves a desk and yells, “Shit!”

He settles his breathing and tucks his laptop into his shoulder bag, then walks into the hall. He’s scheduled for office hours but doesn’t want to risk running into the Tapir, whose office is three doors down, so he takes the stairs to the ground floor and steps outside into the chill. It’s not raining so much as misting, and the air smells like briny black dirt. As he follows the walkways, puddled and yarned with drowned earthworms, he keeps his head down and thinks about the end of his teaching career. Maybe after he’s denied tenure, he can get a job working for UPS. That’s always seemed appealing to him. Driving around all day, listening to the radio. Staying in shape by hoisting boxes and tromping up porches. He would have no real boss and everyone would be happy to see him, because the UPS man was like Santa in brown shorts.

Yes. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll become a UPS man. It’s decided. The only thing that could possibly save him from this fate is magically winning a Benjamin Franklin Award or suddenly stumbling onto a scientific breakthrough.

Just as the rain starts back up again, he arrives at the new Life Sciences Complex, a massive, two-hundred-thousand-square-foot windowed building with an attached greenhouse, where his lab is located. He’s officially in charge of two grad students, but aside from signing their forms and allotting them grant money, he hasn’t done much for them. He’s been trying to make up for that lately by offering to coauthor a paper and personally taking on more field assignments when calls come in from the university’s extension office.